"Oh, father! oh, father!" Joyce murmured.
"There's a lot of folks come to see after him. Mr. Paget and Squire Bennett, and the Bishop's son from Wells; and there's no want of help; and they'll try and hunt him out."
"Hunt who out?"
"Why, the brute that caused the master to fall off Mavis's back, of course. I never did hold with master being so free riding over the Mendips at late hours. I've said so scores of times—scores. But there, he had the heart of a lion, he had."
Had! had! How the word smote on Joyce's ear.
"Has father—has—" she murmured, "he cannot, cannot be—dead!"
After this Joyce said no more. They went at a fair pace along the lonely lanes; they passed through villages where the men were smoking pipes at the cottage doors, the women standing by with babies in their arms, while dusty, dirty little urchins played at "cross sticks" under the very nose of the old horse. Once they passed a small farm where a mother, neatly dressed, was standing at the gate, and a girl of fourteen ran out to meet a man with her baby brother in her arms, who stretched out his hands as the girl said:
"Yes, there's daddy! Go to daddy; welcome, daddy!"
Ah! how often had Joyce watched for her father at the gate! How her heart had thrilled with joy as she ran to meet him; and now!
A low cry escaped her, which made Thomas turn his head, which he had hitherto kept steadily to the front, as if everything depended on his staring straight between the ears of the horse, and never looking to the right hand, or the left.